The Hunter In The Forest
by malendras
Summary: Life in the wilderness of northern Maine is difficult, even for a witch. It's even harder in winter. But Kira Arnaud is a step above most. One-shot Prelude/Teaser for an upcoming semi-AU series.


So. Hi. I'm Greg, AKA malendras. I recently graduated college and have suddenly found myself with an abundance of unfilled time. I've decided to take that time to write. Specifically, I'm going to be putting my own spin on JK Rowling's Potterverse. More specifically, the American side. I've got a story to tell there.

Unfortunately, it's still in the planning stages. But I've got some stuff written. I figured I'd give some of this stuff some exposure to get some reviews, make edits, etc. Full story coming late 2012/early 2013. Watch this space. Here's a teaser!

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It seemed to Kira that, in fiction, winter and struggle are constant companions. It makes sense, since cold provides a lot of storytelling potential. Masses of people huddling together for warmth, frantic struggles to build a fire, foraging for food in a barren winter wasteland, desperately seeking shelter from a blizzard - all of these are iconic, powerful images that winter can provide. Really, summer is just as deadly as winter, and heat just as powerful as cold. But most people? They don't know that. In the minds of many, Winter is death, with starvation and freezing a constant threat; Summer is life, food, and prosperity. Struggle happens in the cold, the same way sorrow is rain and anger a boiling heat. It's the way of the world.

And Kira was learning it firsthand.

Of _course_ she'd been exiled to the Appalachian Mountains, barely 10 miles from Canada. And of course it was in late November. Not just any November, either. This one had teeth. From the time she was unceremoniously dumped in northern Maine, dropped there by the guardians of the only society she had ever known, the temperature hadn't gone above 20 degrees. Most of the time, it never made it above 10. A few days hadn't even made positive digits at all.

Those are Fahrenheit degrees, mind you. Which meant that right now, just after midnight in early December, even saltwater froze solid. Ice _would_ suffice, here, should the Mayans prove to be correct in a few weeks. The thermometer Kira carried read minus 15 degrees. It almost always read minus 15 degrees. It couldn't go any lower. And, to make things worse, Kira was perched 25 feet above the ground, sitting on a tree branch that was doing its best to make her ass feel like it had been given 5 shots of Novocain.

It was one of the few times she could remember regretting her nocturnal lifestyle.

Her eyes scanned the horizon, wind whipping around and through her many-layered clothes, threatening to freeze her eyes wide open. Her head turned slowly, those cold blue eyes flitting to and fro, scanning for any sign of movement from anything alive. She saw nothing. She had seen nothing move but dead leaves and snow for an hour and a half. She twitched her arms, just to make sure they could still move. Her fingers flexed - five around the tree branch she was sitting on, five around an altogether more important piece of wood. She shrugged her shoulders, sending a pile of snow falling to the forest floor. She shook her head. And waited.

She saw nothing.

Every few minutes she'd _think_ she saw something. Her body would stiffen, her eyes would bore in on something briefly visible through the snow, her right hand would clench tight. She'd stare. And then she'd relax, grip loosening, muscles relaxing, when she realized it was nothing more than a trick of the light and wind. She continued to watch. Her fingers lost feeling.

Then she actually did see something.

Just as she had only a few minutes before, her eyes bored in on movement. Her body tensed, her numb fingers gripped tighter. But they did not relax seconds later. She'd seen a deer. An injured one, judging by its gait and the fact it was moving at night in this weather. It had probably been chased in this direction. That was good. Prey always run further than predators. And since the deer was walking, the chase was over. She would not be interrupted. The corners of her eyes narrowed. Had her mouth not been covered, you could've seen the faintest smile cross her lips.

Her left arm tensed, her weight shifted, and she launched herself out of the tree. She hit the ground softly, evenly, four limbs and a lithe body bearing the impact with tremendous grace. Yet on the ground, Kira was nowhere to be seen. No arched back, no layers of clothing, no vigilant stare. Yet from the snow, a figure emerged, unrecognizable except for the eyes. A four-legged creature, tail arched, claws extended, teeth bared - and the same crystal-blue eyes staring forward. Kira had transformed. After all, lynxes are far better than humans at hunting in a forest at twenty below.

Kira moved forward through the snow. Every step was carefully placed, every movement planned. The deer was injured, but it outweighed her lynx form by two hundred pounds. The deer couldn't see her coming if she was to stand a chance. She stalked forward, padded paws making muffled imprints in the snow, eyes staring forward. She was playing it by instinct.

An admirable feature of the animagus transformation is that you gain the instincts of the animal you become. When she shifted, Kira was not a human in lynx form. She was a lynx, entirely a lynx, just with a human mind attached to her wild brain. The human part was supreme, of course, and she (and all animagi) retained all the exceptional feats of thought humans are capable of. But she still _became_ a Lynx, down to her very core, and she heard her wild side's urges and thoughts. She could ignore them, easily. It was just like having a steady stream of whispered suggestions in her ear.

But on a hunt, those suggestions were very good. Far better than her human mind could conjure. So she let the whispers dominate. Soft suggestions turned into action and thought as her human mind stepped aside. This was not its domain. Her slow, careful movements, the low crouching walk towards the deer was an exact replica of what, thousands of miles away, scores of Eurasian Lynxes were doing and had done for thousands of years.

Kira crept behind a tree, inching her way towards the deer. Good luck for her - the deer was facing away from her, and nursing it's wound besides. It was shaking - probably from both blood loss and the cold. It's right foreleg had a deep gash running across its top, torn muscle and tendons exposed to the bitter wind. Better yet, she could see the white of the deer's femur shining through. Her heart beat a bit faster for a second. She could smell the blood.

She crept ever closer. Bless this wind and snow, she thought wordlessly. Bless the bitter cold and good fortune of another predator's missed kill. It made this an easy target. She was almost in range. She flexed her claws and tensed her jaw. She took another step forward. Her lips curled back, exposing pure white fangs. She took another step. Her legs curled under her, she tensed her muscles. She paused. The deer's head moved.

The lynx became a blur, flying forward, feet pounding into the snow. The deer caught her motion, turned its head - but it was too late. It tried to turn and run. It saw death approach and did the only thing it knew how to.

It was the worst possible reaction. Had the deer stood and fought, it may have stood a shot at injuring the lynx and chasing it off. Had the deer froze, it might have been in good enough position to recover. No such luck. Right as the deer took off, the lynx leapt onto the deer's back, claws sinking deep, body flailing to get position. She curled up around the deer's neck, claws sinking deep into fur and skin, mouth open and waiting for the right moment to clamp shut. And then her teeth found the deer's throat.

Most animals do not kill their prey through blood loss. Actually, they strangle. The fangs keep the predator's mouth securely attached to their prey's windpipe while they choke. Exsanguination is just a positive side effect, another bonus to having those long teeth. Yet this time, their side effect was more important. Through sheer luck, Kira's fangs found the deer's jugular vein. This is the primary vein coming out of the head, the biggest risk in a throat-slitting - or neck-biting. Much of the brain's blood returns to the heart through the jugular. In the deer's case, none of that blood would ever find the heart again.

The lynx released her jaws, and the deer's blood vented outwards. Kira tasted and smelled the flow. She released her grip. Why struggle? The deer's dead. It's just a matter of time before it stops pretending to be alive. She dropped from the deer's back. The deer struggled on for a few more steps before its legs gave out. It tumbled to the ground, throwing up a wall of white and red, its limbs flailing to stand one more time before they went still forever. Kira watched.

She did not have to wait long. The blood venting out the deer's severed jugular deprived the brain of blood instantly. The brain's blood pressure dropped sharply, as the arteries could not make up for the severed jugular's gushing. The cells in the brain were starved of oxygen. With little new blood arriving, no pressure on the existing blood, and a direct exit available for that remainder, the deer did not have long. And less than thirty seconds after Kira ripped its jugular vein, the deer lost consciousness. It would never regain it.

She stared, the lynx, at the now-carcass of the deer. It was a doe, she observed. A large one, young, still learning the ways of the forest - ways she would now never learn. She was newly mature, perhaps a few months removed from the beginning of her fertility. She probably left no fawns to survive her. Inwardly, the lynx felt a slight pang of disappointment. Killing the mother doomed the children. They would have been an easy snack in days to come.

She marched forward, observing her kill, staring into the still black eyes as snow descended upon them, a cloud slowly forming over the irises. The snow around its neck burned crimson, as blood still trickled from her open throat. The wound on her side had stopped bleeding already. Fur moved in the wind, snowflakes melting on contact - but more slowly than before. The deer was getting cold. The lynx's stomach growled and contracted as her nose and mouth sensed freshly spilled blood. She bared her teeth and prepared her claws.

And then the lynx was no more. Standing in her spot was a human, Kira Arnaud in the full, no longer distracted with wild whispers in her mind. Her right hand was still tightly gripping the piece of wood in her coat - her wand. She frowned. The cold was more severe, the doe's eyes more piercing, the blood more unpleasantly striking to a human. The smell was gone. And for a few seconds, Kira stared into the doe's eyes. The snowflakes falling upon it no longer melted at all. A misty haze was quickly enveloping them now. And as bright blue eyes gazed into cold black ones they felt, for just a moment, like they were being stared upon in turn.

Finally, Kira looked downwards. "_The Circle of Life._" she thought. "_Is cruel and unforgiving._" She drew her wand and flicked it at the deer. It rose above the ground, its limbs hanging limply beneath it. Kira turned and wrapped her coat more tightly. It would be a long walk back to camp.


End file.
